The Greater New York section of The Wall Street Journal. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

It's portrayed as the clash of the Big Apple titans: Monster Murdoch versus Slightly Soppy Sulzberger. But try a more measured approach to last week's most momentous launch: a greater New York section in the Wall Street Journal taking on the New York Times – and aiming to take away quite a lot of its best brand advertising in the process. Indeed, try a few facts first.

America's audited six-monthly circulation figures emerged just as Mr Murdoch was dishing out the drinks for WSJ advertisers. His Journal is the US's bestselling paper. Its sales have risen year-on-year by 0.5%. And if that sounds rather puny as successes go, note that the average drop for American daily papers is 8.7%, with some big names (say the Dallas Morning News or the San Francisco Chronicle) down by well over 21%. The New York Times now sells 951,000 copies a day, 8.47% less than a year ago. The Journal is closing in on 2.1m.

Better yet, when it comes to selling digital editions, the Journal – on 414,000 subscriptions a day – has more than the next five US papers combined, with the New York Times at 91,000.

So, in spite of all the hype and excitement, this isn't some wild News Corporation lurch into alien territory. It's competition as usual in an American newspaper world that seems to have forgotten what competition means (because, from city to city around the land, there isn't much left). Will the Journal drive the Times out of business? No: "There'll be a New York Times forever", said Murdoch himself as battle was joined. But it may have to be a smarter, less ponderous Times.

Murdoch seems to be investing at least $15m in a bid to pick up Bloomingdale's best consumer advertising. It won't be quick and it won't be easy. But at least the money is going into print rather than vanishing online. At least 40 extra journalists have a good job. And at least there's more than joshing rivalry at stake.

Two of Murdoch's main henchmen made the point as the Journal's greater New York coverage began: if this works, there'll be many more sections of regional news, arts and features following for places like Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. This isn't just a New York sparring contest with the Times. As you can see in San Francisco already, both the Journal and the Times think that good bay-area reporting can fill a gap that the very weak local papers leave gaping wide.

There's a redefinition, in short, of what "national" and "local" can mean. And if that's true in the US, what about Britain's morning national papers in Liverpool or Birmingham, where just the same shrinkage applies? Day-by-day, remember, London has only one free evening newspaper reporting what goes on.

New York Rupert would know how to respond to an opportunity like that. Enter a Greater London section in his own Times of Wapping? It's a sadness, and a curiosity, that ambition and investment don't seem to travel so easily across the ocean these more cautious, wary days.